When type 1 journalist Jim Hirsch came out with his book about the business and life-challenges of diabetes, Cheating Destiny, I called it the book I wish I wrote; it moved and entertained me, and it felt like the first-ever book about diabetes that people without the disease could ever truly enjoy reading.
Now comes attorney Amy Ryan’s new volume Shot: Staying Alive With Diabetes, which feels like the book that I DID WRITE — at least in my heart 
and my head over the last decade. Everything about her story is so familiar, so raw and honest, so true to the REAL experiences of being hit with an intense chronic illness around age 30, and struggling to “remake” your life around it.
It’s an intensely personal narrative, from the moment of her diagnosis in 1996 to today, which spares no details on everything from syringe angst to carb-counting inadequacy to sex as a cyborg, dealing with a pump (while peeing), the bumpy road that is a diabetic pregnancy, to other people’s insensitivity and frustration without end, to a site infection that also seems incurable. But hey — don’t get me wrong, this book really is a joy to read!
Amy (namesake power!) peppers her personal experiences with fantastic factual explanations of the various aspects of diabetes medical issues and treatments — all in laymen’s terms and super-easy to digest. She also tosses in, at a regular clip, wonderful observations about life in general and universal diabetes truths.
For example:
“The greatest and most cruel irony of managing Type 1 diabetes is that insulin, the substance you need to survive — the only thing on earth that will bring your glucose levels back to the normal range — can also harm you. The tighter you try to manage your disease… the riskier. And here we find ourselves again in the definition of ‘chronic:’ insulin therapy is constantly vexing.”
And on failure:
“It isn’t just that my body fails me — I fail myself. I fail to control my diabetes in the very tight manner that we, the royal ‘we’ who have diabetes in this day and age, are told we should be able to do. We have tools to manage our disease far more effectively than would ever have been possible, or even imaginable, 25 years ago. We have portable glucose monitors and continuous monitors. We have long-acting insulin, short-acting insulin, and insulin pumps. We have super fine-tipped syringes, syringe pens… We have, in theory, everything at our disposal that the doctors and medical device companies and pharmaceutical companies tell us should enable us to control our disease. Yet control eludes us. Control eludes me. And when control eludes me, I am a failure.”
Thank you, Amy! Educated, articulate DC-lawyer, who isn’t afraid to brazenly admit that despite having the best care and the best tools available, managing type 1 diabetes just right is still damn-near impossible.
I can so relate to so many of her sentiments, for example her reaction when a colleague tells Amy happily that her (the coworker’s) gestational diabetes has ended:
“‘Good for you,’ I said, and I meant it. I do not for an instant intend to minimize the stress and fear that a woman who has gestational diabetes must endure. For a woman who has never seen 130 on a glucose meter, the prospect of seeing that number is as disturbing to her as 330 is for me. But it is still hard to hear diabetes referred to in the past tense. It is a blessing for the person whose past it is. It is depressing for the person whose present and future it is.”
Amy chronicles the time from her diagnosis, when she is single and just beginning law school, through marrying her boyfriend and taking on two stepsons, sitting for the bar exam, and struggling through a diabetic pregnancy of her own. Mothers-to-be will delight to know that she had a healthy daughter, who remains diabetes-free.
This is hands-down the most “relatable” book about life with diabetes I’ve ever read. But there were still a few surprises. First, Amy’s level of anxiety the first night after she got diagnosed; she literally had a panic attack and had to call the paramedics (!) Her first injection was something like a 10-page drama. And then later, when she starts on the OmniPod, she is equally freaked out and takes an entire week off work to adjust to wearing the pump.
I know everyone is different, but reading this stirred up a lot of conflicting emotions for me: finally, someone who can explain the bewilderment and fear of being handed a life-threatening illness (something every healthcare provider needs to read about!) And at the same time, aversion: who can let themselves get so wound up with self-pity? At the time of my diagnosis, you may recall, I had a 5-year-old, 3-year-old, and 5-month-old baby at home. The diagnosis was all about THEM. Who would look after them? Answer to their calls? Who would be strong and present enough? I didn’t have the time or the luxury to fret about needles… Just show me how to use the damn things so I can get out of this sterile, hospital prison and back to my children who need me!
The other thing that surprised me is that despite having great doctors by her own account, when Amy finally works up the nerve to ask her endo about “intimacy” while wearing a pump, he seems blindsided. “It didn’t appear that he had ever been asked this question,” she writes. “He thought for a moment, and then said ‘Well, I guess you could just clip it to the bedsheet.’” WTF?! Really? I guess in those few “trial days” when medical professionals try a pump using saline, he just thought abstinence was in order…
Needless to say, it was several years until Amy considered becoming a pumper, and only then with the tubeless OmniPod. This works well for her, until she gets an extremely nasty site infection that ends up looking like a bullet hole in her leg. Naturally, she didn’t recognize and treat the infection early enough because no one had warned her about such things.
Oy! More proof that physicians who treat people with diabetes need to read this book — to be forced to think about what real life is like with diabetes!
I think Daniel Einhorn, medical director of the Scripps Whittier Diabetes Institute, put it best when he said, in his front-cover endorsement: “Everyone who thinks they understand someone with type 1 — and I include myself and my colleagues — can benefit from reading this book.”
And if you’re living with type 1 yourself, I echo author Dan Hurley’s comments that after reading this book, Amy Ryan “will be like a new best friend.”
If you’d like to get to know her more, check out this recent interview in USA Today.
{Hudson Whitman/Excelsior College Press, January 2013, $11.84 on Amazon.com}
The DMBooks Giveaway
Interested in winning your own free copy of SHOT: Staying Alive With Diabetes? Entering the giveaway is as easy as leaving a comment.
Here’s what to do:
1. Post your comment below and include the codeword “DMBooks” somewhere in the the text to let us know that you’d like to be entered in the giveaway.
2. You have until Friday, Feb. 22, 2013, at 5 p.m. PST to enter. A valid email address is required to win.
3. The winner will be chosen using Random.org.
4. The winner will be announced on Facebook and Twitter on Monday, Feb. 25, 2013, so make sure you’re following us! We’ll update this blog post with the winner’s name once chosen.
The contest is open to all. Good luck!
UPDATE: This contest is now closed. Congrats to Paige Joslyn Kuehmeier for being selected by Random.org as the DMBOOKS winner! We’ll make sure that book is on the way to you soon!
)
Thanks for the interesting review!
DMBooks. I would love to read this!
I can’t wait to read this book. Gotta give a big mother-son speech about his type 1 in a few days and this will be so helpful! DMBooks. Thanks!
Part of me is wondering “Why would I want to read my own autobiography?”. Much like Amy wrote (Amy T, that is) – if this is practically my own story, my own challenges, struggles, and miseducation, why would I want to re-live it through the pages of a book?
But another part of me is intrigued. Surely Amy R (the author) has something to be proud of. Surely she has done well professionally and personally. Surely she speaks “our language” and understands the absurdity of those who don’t (clip it to the bedsheets? puh-leez!).
I don’t know if this book will teach me anything in the way of skills and techniques, if it will strengthen the “you’re not alone” spirit, or if I’m even the target audience for the book, but I think it’s a read that I could really enjoy. DMBooks.
DMBOOKS. I would love to have this book and share with my D-friends.
DMBooks, looks like a great read!
DMBooks! Thanks for the review!
DMBooks looks like an interesting read.
Reading a D iabetes M ine book review of SHOT is a special insight into the importance of a D iabetes M anagement Book.
Thanks for the DMBook review. AS always have a great day.
Dan
DMBook. I would love to read this
DMBOOKS.
DMBook, BOTH of my children – who are now young adults – were diagnosed in their youth as insulin dependent diabetics. They struggle to stay in control. I weep when I think of complications for them when they cannot. They sometimes lose the will to try to stay in control, and I weep that I might lose them before their time. They do not complain, so I weep for them. They are strong, yet would be so empowered to be able to read a book to know that others have traveled their same road. There is strength and hope in solidarity, and comfort in unity. Thank you.
DMBooks. This book sounds wonderful and like something I could totally relate to!
I think this would be a great book to give family members, new romantic partners, therapists, etc. – who are interested in knowing “what diabetes is like,” which I’ve found too difficult to sum up in a paragraph in conversation, and too complex to sit down and write it out. Thanks, Amy R, for taking the time to write it out, and thanks, Amy T, for bringing it to us! DMBooks
DMBooks I would love to read this, and share it.. I’m the mom of a T1… thanks for the review..
DMBooks. Great research material for The Sweet Lowdown, the show I’m writing about diabetes.
I read the review and am frustrated. So often, when lured in by “this author really gets it,” I find they really don’t. They see their piece of the puzzle, but not the big picture, and thus many of the misperceptions persist.
DMBooks Thanks for the review!
This sounds amazing. DMBooks, pick me!
DmBooks. As mother of T1 daughter, can’t wait to read this book, and pass it on to her in a few years. Thanks for the review!
Sounds like a great read! DKBOOKS
DM Books
Sounds like a good read!
I had read about the author and her book in USA Today and I was interested in reading it. DMBooks
I’ve been T1 for 70 years, and it’s always interesting to read how others have dealt with it. So I’m looking forward to reading this one. DMBooks
DMBooks, this looks awesome! Thanks for the great review!
DMbooks would enjoy sharing this book!
I think this book would give me some insight on the thoughts and feelings of my son, who was diagnosed eight years ago this month. It may offer some help to him when he is older as well. DMBooks.
Thank you
DMBooks, this definitely sounds like a good read for me. Although I’ve had T1 for 12 years, this year I’ve switched from manual injections to an insulin pump, and I’m very interesting in earning from others’ experiences.
DMBooks. I am a T2D who is learning a great deal about T1D through a project for school. Cannot wait to pick up a copy of this!
DMBOOKS from another T1 dx’d in her 30s!
DMBooks, sounds like a book my newly dx’d teenage son and I should read.
DMBooks, this sounds like a really insightful foray into the life of someone with Type I diabetes. My younger sister was diagnosed 8 years ago, and I think she still struggles (physically and emotionally) with the disease. As an “T1D outsider” I can only be there for her to an extent, but this book will demonstrate empathy and a similar struggle – and show her that’s she’s not alone. Thanks!
I would like to read this book as I was diagnosed with T1 as an adult and it really turns your world upside-down. DMBooks rock!
DMBooks! New DMom here would love to read these!
DM Books I would love to give this book to my son who has had type 1 for 4 years.
DMBooks. Thanks for this review, and for all you do for T1D’s
As a person who does not have diabetes (see — I actually learned how to phase that from Amy’s book!), I offer a “must read” endorsement for SHOT. My health condition is not chronic in the sense that I maintain it through painstaking measures each day. Mine is the type in which your artery tears for no reason (damn it!) and your heart may stop from the resulting heart attack. Yet SHOT totally spoke to me, in terms of the loneliness, struggle, and overwhelming despair of a serious health condition at a young age.
Read this book. And, congratulations Amy F. Ryan!
Katherine
I would love this book, not only to read myself, but to share with the many people in my life without diabetes who are trying to understand my many frustrations. DMBooks
I love the books you have at DBbooks
I am a type 1 diabetic and I am 16 weeks pregnant! DMBOOKS I would love to read this =)
I so agree with you on Cheating Destiny! I just found out that a college friend’s little boy (eight years old) has just been diagnosed with D – going to recommend Cheating Destiny. Don’t think they’re ready for this one yet, but I know I am…
DMBooks
Thanks DMBooks! I am the mother of a Type 1 teenage daughter that was diagnosed at 7. I would love to read this book and share with her!
This book looks fantastic. Can’t wait to read it.
DMBooks
I was just looking at purchasing this book – DMBooks would be a great way to get a copy. I do a lot of outreach in our community for T1D, and I am always looking for new materials for families. Thank you for your website!
I’d love to read this book. As a parent of a young adult with t1d, it’s important for me to hear the experience of other adults. DMBooks And Amy, what a review – WOW.
I would love to read this book. Please enter us to win DMBooks….. Thank You
As the mother of a newly diagnosed t1d, I would be especially interested to read about the challenges ahead. DMBooks
Yes please enter for DMBooks- Son w/T1
DMBooks. Sounds like a great book.
DMBooks. Sounds like the book I want to write.
DMBooks. I would love to read this book especially as a person with T1 diabetes.